Course Site
Reflections on Moodle
I created an introduction module, as well as the banking and credit units for a grade 10 Introduction to Business course that I teach. I have no previous experience using Moodle and I hadn’t even seen a course designed in Moodle before this term. Creating my own site was a huge challenge!
The Beginning
The first task I completed was playing in the sandbox at Moodle.org. I learn best by doing so working with Moodle early in the term was an absolute necessity for me. I also appreciated the timing of the first Moodle chat. It came at a time when I was familiar enough with the basic structure of Moodle so I could understand the terminology used such as resource and activity. The one gap that I identified at this point was my lack of HTML knowledge which was confirmed on the HTML quiz. The first time I took the quiz, I felt as if I was studying a new language.
Using Amaya
There were a number of challenges in completing this assignment. I downloaded Amaya to help create my HTML pages and while I found it fairly user-friendly, I would have preferred more than three font styles. I also had some difficulty getting the program to use Arial font. Despite specifying that I wanted Arial font, Amaya insisted on using Times New Roman.
I also had some challenges getting Amaya to properly place my graphics on some pages. As a result, I became familiar with learning how to read and debug the source code.
Moodle Quiz
I learned a great deal about the quiz functionality in Moodle by setting up my own quiz. I can definitely see the benefit of creating questions as part of a question bank. While it is time consuming to enter the questions initially, the ability to select questions for future assessments would be invaluable. I also liked the ability to set dates as to when the quiz would be available to my students and used this functionality for the quiz in the credit module of my own site.
GUI Interface
It took me a while to complete the GUI interface on my course’s splash page. I couldn’t find graphics that I liked, so I decided to make my own and upload them to my Moodle site. The task of getting the graphics in and properly spacing them in the table took longer than I anticipated. I also had to research how to create the links from the text accompanying the graphics to its related module or activity.
Embedding Videos and Links
It took me a while to locate what I considered to be an appropriate video on the credit process. Once I found one, I had to figure out how to get it into my Moodle site. Thankfully, there is a great deal of information on the Internet about how to embed videos in a Moodle site and I didn’t have too much difficulty completing this step.
Navigation and Consistency
I chose to have all activities and videos load in the same window so students could use the navigation in the upper right-hand corner of the screen to access other Moodle pages. I personally don’t like having several different windows open at the same time or having to use the browser buttons to navigate back to a previous page.
In order to ensure consistency of my pages, I created a template page in Amaya and then added the content for each topic. This approach ensured that the heading of each page, the font size and type, and the graphics were the same on each page I created.
Challenges
Uploading Revised Files
I experienced a few challenges in creating this site. For example, the first time I uploaded a file from Amaya to Moodle, everything usually worked fine. If, however, I needed to change something in Amaya and upload the new version to Moodle, I could not get the revised page to show on my site. The only way the revised version would be visible is if I changed the file name by adding a “1” or a “2”, adding spaces or taking away spaces.
RSS Feeds
I also found creating the RSS feeds somewhat difficult. I wanted to set up the Globe & Mail’s business section as a feed, but it did not pass the validation process. I was successful in setting up a feed to the CBC’s business section, but I couldn’t see any updates on my site.
Hidden Module
I spent many hours researching how to program a module for selective release. Since we’re not using Moodle 2.0, selective release isn’t readily available. There also appeared to be a potential method to accomplish selective release in this version of Moodle, but I don’t have administrator rights. Another potential solution would have involved changing the way I set up my site. I prefer organizing the site by topic, so this was not an option either.
In the end, I settled for hiding my second module, credit, so that I could manually release it to students once they had completed the banking module. I also programmed the quiz in the credit module to only be available to students for a limited period of time.
Summary
I am satisfied with the site I created. This assignment gave me an opportunity to learn about Moodle and HTML coding. It also allowed me to create some activities specifically for an online audience such as forums and a quiz with automated feedback.